Radio Host Lee Elci Enters State Senate Race Against Martha Marx

Lee Elci has spent more than 20 years talking about what’s wrong with Southeastern Connecticut. 

Now, he wants to do something about it. 

The radio host’s campaign on Sunday filed paperwork registering him as the Republican candidate for the 20th State Senate District seat currently held by two-term Democrat Martha Marx of New London. 

“There’s a great quote from Theodore Roosevelt back in 1910 about being ‘a man in the arena,’” Elci recounted in a Monday phone interview. “I think it’s time for me to get in the arena and try to do what’s right.” 

Billing himself as the “Voice of Freedom,” he hosts the Lee Elci Show weekday mornings from 6 to 10 a.m. on the Fox News Radio affiliate WJJF at 94.9 FM.  

Though he acknowledged a conservative bent to his show and to his own outlook on fiscal matters, Elci was registered as an unaffiliated voter until last week. That’s when he heard Ron LaBonte, a Salem selectman who’d been endorsed at the Republican convention in May, was no longer able to pursue the position. 

Elci agreed to step up as a Republican. 

“I’ve always been unaffiliated, but because of the mechanism to get elected in the state, you have to pick one (party),” he said. 

The 60-year-old Waterford High School graduate has lived in East Lyme for 23 years. 

Describing himself as “almost libertarian in nature,” Elci said he is an old-school deficit hawk and a social moderate. 

“However you want to live your life – as long as you’re not hurting anybody else and not hurting kids or dogs or animals or anything like that – whatever lifestyle you choose, I’m fine with,” he said. 

Elci said his radio career has led him to try to be as nonpartisan as possible while conversing with people from various parties every day at work. 

Still, he said he is clearly “much more of a Republican” than a Democrat. 

“I can’t imagine me and Martha agree on anything,” he said.  

Marx on Monday said she was out all day and would have no comment on the news of Elci’s candidacy until she looked into it. 

Old Lyme Democratic Town Committee Chair Kimberly Thompson and Republican Town Committee Chair Randy Nixon did not return a call for comment Monday. 

Marx was reelected in 2024 with about 55% of the vote against Old Lyme’s Shaun Mastroianni.  She first won the seat in 2022, defeating Jerry Labriola of Old Saybrook with about 52% of the vote to succeed retiring state Sen. Paul Formica of East Lyme. 

The 20th district covers New London, Salem, Bozrah, East Lyme, Old Lyme, Waterford and parts of Old Saybrook and Montville.  

Elci said he will not discuss his campaign on the air and will avoid talking about issues involving the towns in the Senate district.

“I’m not going to mention the campaign at all, will not utter one thing about it on the air,” he said. “I think that’s the fairest way to go about it.” 

On Trump 

According to Elci, there’s a misconception that he’s “all-in MAGA.”

“I am not,” he said. “It depends on what we’re talking about as to whether or not I agree with him.”

Among areas of agreement are Trump’s “America first” approach and efforts to curb unauthorized immigration at the southern border. 

“I think we should be America first,” he said. “I think we should think about taking care of our own before we take care of everybody else’s. And we have veterans and people living under bridges and sleeping outside at night.”

But the self-described deficit hawk said Trump hasn’t gone far enough in reducing foreign aid. 

“I’m a little bit disappointed in what was promised and what was delivered,” he said.

On Police and Housing

If there’s one issue that made the former professional baseball player decide this was the right time to step up to the plate politically, he said it would be the way members of law enforcement are treated. 

He pointed to Connecticut’s police accountability law, enacted after the murder of George Floyd, as well as a more recent law restricting the presence of law enforcement near election sites. 

“I think what put me over the top is some of the treatment of police officers and some of the conversations I’ve had in the last couple of months,” he said. “They are so dejected and they all feel unappreciated because of this police accountability bill.” 

Elci said he hasn’t yet examined Marx’s voting record, but described her as closely aligned with the Democratic Party line and Gov. Ned Lamont. 

“I think as a whole, from Lamont on down, the way they’ve treated police has been an absolute embarrassment,” he said. 

Elci also criticized state housing legislation supported by Marx, who serves as chair of the legislature’s Housing Committee. 

He cited the law signed by Lamont in late November after lawmakers met in a special session to revisit legislation previously vetoed by the governor. The new law calls for cities and towns to allow developments of two to nine housing units in commercial districts, reduce off-street parking requirements for developments with fewer than 16 units except in limited areas, and create housing growth plans. 

The law is the latest effort to address a statewide housing shortage. Lawmakers have long cited restrictive zoning in many communities as a reason there aren’t enough affordable homes for people who want to live there. 

Elci said the law removes authority from local zoning commissions and imposes a “cookie-cutter” approach on municipalities across the state.

“Some people want to move away from a crowded urban area to a suburban area,” he said. “It has nothing to do with race or color or anything. It has to do with, you want a certain lifestyle and you go find it. You go work for it. You get it.” 

On Name Recognition

Locally, Elci said he hopes his 30-year career on the airwaves, including 21 years in talk radio, will bode well for his chances of unseating Marx. 

“My job has put me in touch with the political process and politicians for a long time, I mean, a quarter of a century,” he said. “So I kind of know how everything works.”

If elected, he doesn’t anticipate a conflict between serving in the part-time legislature and continuing his radio career. The session runs from January to June in odd years and February to May in even years. 

“It would only be a few months out of the year where I’d be running up to Hartford after my show is over, to pretty much talk about the things that I just talked about,” he said.  

He described it as a benefit to be able to bring listeners an inside perspective on the legislative process while taking their concerns to Hartford. 

“I think it’s a huge positive, because I’m plugged in all the time,” he said.

Elci said he won’t start active campaigning until he has collected enough signatures to qualify for public campaign financing. He expects the process to be completed by Aug. 24.

LaBonte, the relatively obscure Salem selectman who’d been quietly carrying the party mantle until this week, put Elci’s chances of winning at “extremely good.” 

LaBonte described Elci as a strong personality well versed on the issues. He said the show’s internet archive makes it easy for voters to click on episodes to find out what the host stands for. 

A lot of it is about name recognition, according to LaBonte.

“Who doesn’t know who he is? It’s not like he’s Ron LaBonte,” he said. 

Editor’s Note: This article was updated with a photo.